level9tech
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VMWare server good long term solution ?
We have been recently testing vmware , and it almost seems too good to be true. We easily convert physical machines to virtual machines and play them on the network and no one can tell the difference, I am just waiting for something bad to happen as this just seems way too easy and awesome.
We are about to convert all of our physical servers to virtual machines. Then we plan to play the virtual machines on vmware server, both are free products, is there any issues I could face, like images stop working after so long ? ?? I just can't believe something that is free , so easy, wont have any draw backs or issues I could run into over a long period of time, so my basic question is , is this a good long term solution.
Thanks
We are about to convert all of our physical servers to virtual machines. Then we plan to play the virtual machines on vmware server, both are free products, is there any issues I could face, like images stop working after so long ? ?? I just can't believe something that is free , so easy, wont have any draw backs or issues I could run into over a long period of time, so my basic question is , is this a good long term solution.
Thanks
ASKER
We do need continous up time, but if we are backing the entire virtual machines up every day, and the physical server were to die, can't we just play the backup virtual machines on another box ?
My short answer to your question is "Yes, depending".
You need to ask yourself a few questions:
The first question is, what is your backup and recovery strategy? Many small shops back up their VM's the traditional way using client agents installed in the VM (such as ARCserve's Windows Client Agent). This is fine, as far as it goes. It will back up the VM just like you would a physical box - so if the VM fails you wouild need to create a new VM, install Windows server, patch it, configure it, install the backup agent, and restore the system and data. Just as with a physical box, this can be very time consuming, and if not done properly can lead to problems down the road (this is true for restoring system state on a physical box too!).
The drawback to this approach is that it does not back up the VM itself. It does not back up the virtual disk files, etc. It does not provide any redundancy, and recovery times can be very long.
The second question has to do with scalability and redundancy. How many VM's will you have? How many hosts will you need to support them? Are these mission critical VM's, or can they be down for a day or two while you recover them? Do you need the ability to fail the VM over to another host with no downtime?
An option that begins to answer some of these questions is the ESX or ESXi product. ESXi is more limited to begin with, but is free. The full ESX product does carry a price tag, but offers much more functionality and "enterprise" functionality.
With either ESX or ESXi, you can scale to many more VM's on a single host, so if you have a lot of VM's you need less hardware (equals cost savings). The performance of the VM's improves, due to lower host overhead. In addition, you can add options such as VMotion,. resource managment, and high availability to begin to ensure that the VM's keep running even if a host goes down, or if you get into a resource constrained situation (not enough processor or RAM availability).
With ESX or ESXi, you also have addtional options (through VMware and/or third party vendors) for better backup strategies. This includes backing up the VM itself, not just the OS running on the VM.
With ESX or ESXi, you can add the VirtualCenter (required for some of the options mentioned above) to give you additional scalability and manageability - VM templates, that allow you to deploy a fully configured VM within minutes (ten minutes to deploy a fully patched Windows server!!!!), better snapshot management, more troubleshooting tools, logging, security, the list goes on and on...
Of course, to add all these features you are moving from a free platform one that will cost money. However, if these are the features that you need, you are going to pay for them.
Bottom Line: Yes, the free VMware Server can be stable, and work fine for a few VM's. I would never stake running my entire business on it though (although admittedly there are likely those that would disagree with me!). If you are moving to virtualization as an IT strategy, at least try ESXi. The cost is the same, but the benefits of lower overhead, and better scalability are tremendous.
VMware Server is fine for non-critical services, test environments, etc. It is not a "mission critical" solution.
You need to ask yourself a few questions:
The first question is, what is your backup and recovery strategy? Many small shops back up their VM's the traditional way using client agents installed in the VM (such as ARCserve's Windows Client Agent). This is fine, as far as it goes. It will back up the VM just like you would a physical box - so if the VM fails you wouild need to create a new VM, install Windows server, patch it, configure it, install the backup agent, and restore the system and data. Just as with a physical box, this can be very time consuming, and if not done properly can lead to problems down the road (this is true for restoring system state on a physical box too!).
The drawback to this approach is that it does not back up the VM itself. It does not back up the virtual disk files, etc. It does not provide any redundancy, and recovery times can be very long.
The second question has to do with scalability and redundancy. How many VM's will you have? How many hosts will you need to support them? Are these mission critical VM's, or can they be down for a day or two while you recover them? Do you need the ability to fail the VM over to another host with no downtime?
An option that begins to answer some of these questions is the ESX or ESXi product. ESXi is more limited to begin with, but is free. The full ESX product does carry a price tag, but offers much more functionality and "enterprise" functionality.
With either ESX or ESXi, you can scale to many more VM's on a single host, so if you have a lot of VM's you need less hardware (equals cost savings). The performance of the VM's improves, due to lower host overhead. In addition, you can add options such as VMotion,. resource managment, and high availability to begin to ensure that the VM's keep running even if a host goes down, or if you get into a resource constrained situation (not enough processor or RAM availability).
With ESX or ESXi, you also have addtional options (through VMware and/or third party vendors) for better backup strategies. This includes backing up the VM itself, not just the OS running on the VM.
With ESX or ESXi, you can add the VirtualCenter (required for some of the options mentioned above) to give you additional scalability and manageability - VM templates, that allow you to deploy a fully configured VM within minutes (ten minutes to deploy a fully patched Windows server!!!!), better snapshot management, more troubleshooting tools, logging, security, the list goes on and on...
Of course, to add all these features you are moving from a free platform one that will cost money. However, if these are the features that you need, you are going to pay for them.
Bottom Line: Yes, the free VMware Server can be stable, and work fine for a few VM's. I would never stake running my entire business on it though (although admittedly there are likely those that would disagree with me!). If you are moving to virtualization as an IT strategy, at least try ESXi. The cost is the same, but the benefits of lower overhead, and better scalability are tremendous.
VMware Server is fine for non-critical services, test environments, etc. It is not a "mission critical" solution.
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When you use VM Ware ESX with 2 servers this is no problem as you can move around the machines any time you want and it does it automaticcaly when you got performance issues ore something like that.
THe disadvantage of ESX againt Server is the price, you need shared storage like iSCSI or a MSA/EVA soluttion and you need 2 machines and esx licenses.
If the machines that are running on your vmware server aren't that important you can keep the edition you are using at this moment because it is free, but when you are running it in a business environment and you need a continious uptime i should choose the cluster esx solution.